Relationships

Question 1

• Define self disclosure:

Answer 1

• Revealing personal info about yourself
• Romantic partners reveal more about their true selves as relationship develops
• These self-disclosures about one’s deepest thoughts and feelings can strengthen a romantic bond when used properly

Question 2

• What is the social penetration theory?

Answer 2

• Self disclosure is a major concept of Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor’s social penetration theory of how relationships develop
• It involves the reciprocal exchange of info between intimate partners
• As they increasingly disclose more and more info to each other, romantic partners ‘penetrate’ more deeply into each other’s lives and gain a greater understanding of each other

Question 3

• Breadth and depth of of self-disclosure:

Answer 3

• As both of these increase, romantic partners become more committed to eachother
• we disclose a lot of superficial and low-risk info at the start of a relationship which we would generally reveal to anyone, friends, co-workers and even acquaintances
• Breadth of disclosure = narrow because many topics are ‘off-limits’ in early stages.
• If we were to reveal too much too soon, it might threaten the relationship
• However, as a relationship develops we’re prepared to reveal intimate, high-risk info- painful memories and experiences, strong held believes, powerful feelings perhaps secrets

Question 4

• Reciprocity of self-disclosure:

Answer 4

• Harry Reis and Phillip Shaver point out that for a relationship to develop there needs to be a reciprocal element to disclosure
• so once you have decided to reveal something that reveals your true self, hopefully your partner will respond in a way that’s rewarding, with understanding, empathy and their own intimate thoughts
• so there’s a balance of self-disclosure between 2 people in a successful romantic relationship which increases feelings of intimacy and deepens the relationship

Question 5

• Evaluation - factors affecting attraction: self disclosure:

Answer 5

• Support from research studies
• real-life application
• cultural differences
• self-disclosure and satisfaction

Question 6

• Define physical attractiveness:

Answer 6

• An important factor in formation of romantic relationships
• Term usually applies to how appealing we find a person’s face
• There’s a general agreement within and across cultures about what’s considered physically attractive
• There exists an assumption that we seek to form relationships with most attractive person available

Question 7

• Explaining the importance of physical attraction:

Answer 7

• Shackelford and Larsen found that people with a symmetrical face are rated as more attractive
• This is because it may be an honest signal of genetic fitness
• people are also attracted to faces with neotenous (baby faces) features such as widely separated and large eyes, delicate chin and a small nose as they trigger s protective or caring instinct- valuable resource for females wanting to reproduce

Question 8

• What did McNulty find?

Answer 8

• Found evidence that initial attractiveness brought partners together and continued to be important feature of relationship after marriage, for at least several years

Question 9

• What is the halo effect?

Answer 9

• Physical attractiveness may also matter because we have preconceived ideas about the personality traits attractive people must have and they’re almost universally positive
• E.g. Dion et al, found that physically attractive people are consistently rated as kind, strong, sociable and successful compared to unattractive people
• psychologists use term ‘halo effect’ to describe how distinguishing one feature tends to have a disproportionate influence on our judgements of a person’s attributes e.g. their personality

Question 10

• What’s the matching hypothesis?

Answer 10

• The possibility that our assessment of our own attractiveness plays a role in our choice of romantic partner
• Proposed by Elaine Walster- hypothesis states that people choose romantic partners who are roughly of similar physical attractiveness to each other
• our choice of partner is basically a compromise- we desire most physically attractive partner for many reasons like evolution, social, cultural and psychological.
• We balance this out to avoid getting rejected

Question 11

• Evaluation- factors affecting attraction: physical attractiveness:

Answer 11

• Research support for halo effect
• individual differences
• research support for the matching hypothesis
• role of cultural influences